As is probably pretty common, spaceship command is number one on the list. All of the skills that allow somebody to fly a given class of ship, like Caldari frigates for example, fall under this.

I also have a heavy investment in learning skills, which speed up training. I buckled down and got all of the learning skills up to at least Level 4 this Summer, which has sped things up in the long run. I am doing the same thing now with my miner.

And then, of course, there is industry, which I have been doing a lot of work in of late, as all of my ore processing and much of the production related skills. Industry is nice because it uses Wilhelm’s two highest attributes, memory and intelligence, so he grinds through industry skills at 1815 skill points per hour.

Electronics is something of a left over from my desire to try covert ops. There are a number of electronics precursors to that skill. I never finished going down that path, but it has helped me with CPU usage on my ships, something I am told is a nagging problem for Caldari vessels.

Missile launcher operations has been largely driven my desire to stop losing Caracals by becoming more effective at missile warfare. I have generally fallen in the “kill things faster, take less damage” school of fighting.

Then there is gunnery, which was probably really useful when I had a Cormorant with 6 75mm rail guns and a pair of missile launchers. Now that I have gone all missiles, they just boost my total.

And then, blah blah blah, down to the end. Drones sounded neat, but were only so-so. Leadership was a prerequisite for another skill. I have shown nothing that resembles leadership in-game otherwise. And I learned just enough corporation management to create a corp, manipulate containers, and invite a Minmatar to our Caldari formed corp.

Out of that 10 million, Wilhelm has a total of 122 known skills, which are spread out as follows:

Generally, any skill worth knowing is worth knowing to level 4. Beyond that, the effort is pretty high. Almost all of the skills I have brought up to level 5, which takes significantly longer than levels 1 through 4 combined, have been prerequisites for other skills.

It may not fit with your mining template, but I found investing in drones being one of the best moves. I haven’t seen the impact of mining drones, but T2 battle drones are rarely lost in missions if you decide to go that route.